When is it time to apologise?

So the summer has speedily past us by filled with exciting things like two children that graduated from University, the pomp and circumstance of the ceremonies, the children off school for their summer break, holidays with the family and of course work pressure because eBay does not sleep…and so I come to you all with an apology…of sorts….

You see whilst I feel incredibly bad that we have not been blogging regularly over the summer and to those who read our every word, I am genuinely sorry, the reason is simple and one I almost can’t apologise for…we have been incredibly busy clearing several homes and businesses and literally have not been able to squeeze another moment in to sit and have cohesive thoughts to write! This is an incredible position for us to be and one that you will not here me complain about, but, we have days when we just don’t know which way is up and we have to get the listings written and auctions running because mostly we have incredibly tight deadlines to meet.

One of the areas that the AuctionGirls try to pride themselves on is communication with both clients and buyers, we are very responsive and try to stay one step ahead of the game. However, I have to admit that this strand of communication through blogging has definitely suffered!

As those of you who run you own business will know we work at very strange hours in order to fit everything in, of course the added angle with eBay is it is alive day and night around the world, so there is always a question from a potential buyer that needs answering or a bid being placed. Very often we feed our respective families and then we start working again in the evening. We generally use this time to catch up with things like sorting photographs and other simple jobs that all need sorting out as very often we are tired by this time and writing listings can be disastrous as I, in particular, seem to miss half the information out!

So when should we apologise; well we spend a fair amount of time apologising to each other when our days don’t quite go according to plan and we end up having to do children things, we say sorry, or when one of us has any number of appointments during the day that preclude us from getting our heads down and working, we say sorry, or when we make a mistake with work, we say sorry, in fact Belinda and I say a lot of genuine sorrys to each other possibly five or six times a day and so with that in mind we are always flabbergasted when people are rude and don’t say please or thank you, never mind sorry!

So coming back to my original question, when is it time to apologise? Well there are things that we genuinely should apologise for, I think admitting you have made a mistake is probably one of the hardest things to do, but why not just hold up your hands and say sorry! People will respect you for it in the long run and this applies to eBay too. On occasions we have sent items to buyers where there has been something not quite right or it has become broken in the post, and guess what the first message we will write back to the angry buyer is we are terribly sorry…this apology goes a long way and is very necessary. But do Belinda and I have to apologise to each other all the time, probably not, however, we are both keen to work as hard as we can and continue to make our AuctionGirl business a success and it makes us who we are…so Belinda…I am really sorry but I confess I did do an online food shop this afternoon in the middle of working!

And now ladies and gentlemen your weekly blog service will be returning to normal so we will not have to apologise again to you!